


Judge

by duckiesandlemons



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Dream Creatures, Multi, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-12 22:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4496790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckiesandlemons/pseuds/duckiesandlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is where the horizon meets the sky, where space seeps into earth, an in between of endless possibilities.  He is one who neither favors nor loathes, but humans are always wonderful, wonderful things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I'm still Dream Creature AU trash. :'>

For creatures born from dreams, Yuuya sometimes wonders what happens to the ones who die.  What happens to the ones who have life snuffed from their eyes, crushed beneath unforgiving talons or their breath choked from them between wicked teeth?  Yuuya wonders, every time Shun and Yuuto come back, covered in the gore and the hopelessness of the creatures they had slaughtered, what happens to these dark truths and realities as they are left to rot on the ground.

“Certainly _something_ comes and gets them,” he asks.  “Or maybe that’s what Serena does?”

“Serena wouldn’t touch them unless it’s the only thing she can do,” Shun snorts.  “She’s a different type than them.”

“She says they don’t taste good,” Yuuto adds.

Yuuya looks away from where the corpse of the creature lay, dispersing into wisps that curl and tickle the skies in a last attempt at blotting out the stars themselves.

“What doesn’t taste good?” he asks.

“Reality, truth,” Yuuto shrugs.  “She says she likes Imagination better.”

Shun grunts, “Something about them being juicier.”

Yuuya looks back at the corpse, expecting it to have fully dissolved, but he doesn’t see anything.  Not even the black smear of blood on the ground.

 

**01**

“What happens to them?” Serena looks at him with eyes the color of leaves in the summer, bright and vivid.  The gems in her hair sparkle, twinkling stars nestled onto a being human but not.  

“Yeah,” Yuuya’s looking at one of the bottles that hold Serena’s nebulae, reading the label and watching as it moved about.  Watercolor blue and red, splashing and mixing into an elegant purple that turned and twisted on itself--a mermaid in a bottle.

Serena hums, fingers tapping at her arm, “All reality must exist, but all reality isn’t set in stone.”

“But that’s just...denying the real world.”

“And isn’t that what dreams are?” Serena walks over and plucks the bottle from Yuuya’s hands.  Her fingers slide across the label, tap at the glass, and the orb inside shakes.  “An escape, a different world than our own.  Reality is composed of perceptions.”

Yuuya furrows his brows.

“Perceptions.”

“It is what it is,” and she places the bottle back into his hands.  “One day you should open a bottle.”

“I’ll pass.”

Their conversation ends when there’s the sound of something falling, followed by Shun’s cursing and Yuuto’s muffled laughter.

 

**02**

“Haven’t you ever wondered?” Yuuya continues asking, curled tight against Shun and fingers clutching feathers, wings furled around him, and the steady breathing of a beast in his ears.  “About what happens?”

“I told you, I don’t,” Shun tells him.  “It’s not my place to ask.”

“Then where do they come from?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

Yuuya pouts, moving and shifting until he’s staring back into six unblinking eyes, gold staring back into red.  The Sun staring at Mars.  “Why do you guys keep it so secret?” a whine to his voice.  

“We don’t--”

“I don’t.  Who even knows about Serena.”

Yuuya can’t even say anything else, suddenly tackled to the ground and arms full of a purring Yuuto.  His body is warm and heavy, comfort, and his fur tickles at Yuuya’s nose.  Yuuya’s hands come up to stroke at Yuuto’s fur, but his eyes stay on Shun.

He knows something.

As always.

 

**03**

Maybe, Yuuya thinks, with how Shun desperately reaches for him, he isn’t supposed to see this man.  This man garbed in the darkest blues, garments flowing like water, accented by a red that furled and folded like elegant fins, moving stars on his body.  Yuuya thinks that maybe he isn’t supposed to see this man, this man who wears the ocean deep.

“We meet again,” the man’s voice doesn’t show much, a mask covering anything deeper, “Kurosaki.”

“Not like I wanted it to be like this,” but Shun’s got a vicious grip on Yuuya, keeping him close, and Yuuto’s snarling.  Yuuya thinks about the corpse of the beast, not too far away, but dark purple (like sparkling scales, amethysts in the deep) stare at him,

Him only.

“Unfortunately, I am here to collect the human.”

“ _Fuck you_.”

Yuuya wonders, with how this new man reaches for him anyways, if maybe he is supposed to meet him.


	2. The Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shun and his first meeting with the Judge

Shun remembers his first encounter.

Shortly after Serena had revived him and he had started hunting, when he didn’t quite have control over everything, he had been in an alley recovering.  The corpse of the beast he had slain sat not too far from him.

“I was not aware that your kind has returned.”

Shun snaps his head up, eyes honing in on some figure walking towards him.  It’s hard to see them, a blurry outline in his vision, but there’s trailing red--fish fins billowing in the water, dark purple settled in the blackest depths of the ocean.  Shun feels an oppressive aura, a heavy weight that crushes, crushes the air out of his lungs and keeps his wings pinned.

A bird felled by water.

“Returned?” he gasps.  “I’ve always--”

“I shouldn’t underestimate Serena, even if she is one of the few left,” and the figure keeps walking, past Shun and towards the corpse of the beast.

“Wait--”

“But you do make my job easier,” and just like that the body of that foul creature Shun’s killed is gone. Disappearing into the depths of the ocean, body left to be eaten away by whatever lurks below the depths.

By whatever lurks behind this figure.

“Good day,” and like that, they’re gone, and Shun can breathe again.


	3. The Deep Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Longing, observing, the depths reach and they pull, pull, pull

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm AkaYuu trash too, oop

The man’s hand had been cold when he grabbed Yuuya.

Cold like the deepest parts of the ocean, unforgiving and crushing.  He had been scared, scared, being pulled away by this man, disappearing in the glimmering flash of stars to some place he could only dream of.  Orbs suspended in the air, so similar to Serena’s bottles upon bottles of nebulae, but at the same time so, so different.

So, so different.

Orbs suspended in the air, shimmering beads that adorned the room they stood in, a blue light--hazy, so hazy--around them.  These aren’t nebulae, Yuuya thinks, they’re too bright.  They gleam and glow like the sun, stars.

White and shining.

White dwarfs.

Belatedly, Yuuya realizes, this is where dreams are brought to die.

“Why did you take me?” he asks, voice holding fear and curiosity.

“Because,” the man tells him, looking at Yuuya with a gaze bright, bright, _piercing_ , “You brought life when there shouldn’t have been.”

“I--”

“You produced a dream too strong for me to gather--I was curious.”

“So what are you.”

“A judge,” it’s said in even, measured words.  This man garbed in water, with billowing red twisting and dancing around him, is too calm.  Too in control.  “A truth seeker, someone who collects and who categorizes.”

“N-no, I mean...what is your name--”

"Reiji.”

 

  **01**

Reiji observes.

He leaves Yuuya to his own devices in this room, watching with sharp eyes and taking down notes on some journal he holds in his hand.  All of Yuuya’s actions are done to the backdrop of pen scratching on paper, no matter how mundane or how useless.

A sneeze--written down.

Yuuya nods off--written down.

A yawn--written down.

Of course, when Yuuya had opened his mouth, Reiji had grasped his chin between two strong fingers.  Examining, examining, it had made Yuuya flush.

“What are you doing?” he asked, words slurred by the fact he couldn’t close his mouth.

“...nothing,” Reiji had mumbled and let Yuuya go.

In this room, in this graveyard for dreams, Yuuya has nothing to do. Nothing he wants to do.  And Reiji barely talks as it is.

Long since has Yuuya noticed the table in one corner, covered in papers and scrolls, quills and ink, an abacus sitting on the corner.  He can’t even examine out of simple curiosity, stopped by a warning from Reiji. 

Yuuya waits and waits.

Reiji observes.

 

**02**

Sometimes, Yuuya dreams when he falls asleep.

About Shun, about Yuuto, about Serena, he dreams and dreams but they’re all fleeting, all brief, and when he wakes up he’s surrounded by gentle lights.  Warm colors that make him smile, make him reach out, but his fingers always brush Reiji’s.

Reiji’s fingers are cold, cold, cold, but every time Yuuya dreams and wakes up he notices Reiji staring at these lights in fascination.

“But aren’t you like Serena?” Yuuya asks one day.

“She and I are of different circumstances,” Reiji tells him and goes right back to writing.

It’s lonely.

 

**03**

Sometimes Yuuya wonders if he, himself, is in a dream.  His body in some long sleep, this room dreamt, and Reiji along with it. Nonsense, he thinks, because he can still sleep in this room, still remember everything, but there’s never a need for food, for water, or anything else.

“So what do you do?” he asks Reiji.  “Here, I mean, it’s...it’s isolated.”

“I collect and I count,” Reiji tells him, as if that’s enough.  “And what do you do?”

“I go to school and, well, I also help Serena out,” Yuuya shrugs.

Reiji shakes his head, “No, how do you produce your dreams.”

“Excuse me?”

Yuuya is just human.

He can’t.

 

**04**

Reiji disappears every now and then for a couple of hours.  Yuuya knows what he’s doing, and that each disappearance means another beast Shun and Yuuto have slain.  Yuuya aches for them, longs for Shun and his hands--his gentle, gentle hands, his--

(But Reiji interests him, makes him curious, makes him _wonder_ )

But when Reiji comes back, red fins trailing behind him, he’s always with more white lights.  White lights that become encased in orbs when Reiji opens the cage he collects them in, spreading out and finding a home somewhere in the room.  Yuuya takes not of the heat coming from them but Reiji…

Reiji always remains cold.

A judge.

A truth seeker.

Yuuya thinks Reiji is something else.

“Do you like dreams?” he continues questioning Reiji.  If Reiji wants to observe, then Yuuya will do some observing of his own.

“...No.”

But there’s hesitance.

“Reality and truths are finalities, though eventually, they as well, die,” Reiji continues.  “I collect them and categorize them.”

That’s it.

Depressing, Yuuya thinks.


	4. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A desperate search, enigmas, what _is_ he, Serena?
> 
> What are _you_

“So you saw him again,” Serena’s voice doesn’t hold any worry to it, nothing to show anger or perhaps curiosity.  It’s flat, flat, flat, and Shun finds it irritating.  Enough to make him bristle, his own anger bubbling underneath the surface and melting out.  

“And that’s all you have to say about that?  ‘Again’?”

“He and I are two different circumstances--what he does is unrelated to what I am.”

“He _took_ Yuuya.”

“He did,” and Serena sighs.  “I can’t stop what he’s interested in, either.”

“Some kind of unspoken rule?”

“There are many,” Serena tells him.  “He just plays outside of them.”  She goes back to working on her bottles, arranging them in ways that only she knows.  Shun’s never asked her reasoning on constantly moving them, tapping at them and disturbing the orbs that rest inside.  But now, he wants to.  Sharp words, bitter and hate filled, rest on his tongue.

But Serena gave him life.

She gave Yuuto life.

“Rules,” Shun hisses, “ridiculous.”

“If you think that’s what they are,” Serena turns to look at him, eyes filled with wisdom beyond what Shun can ever comprehend giving him a calculating look.  The silence is long, thick and heavy, making Shun fidget.  “He would have come for you if I had not found you,” she says.  “A dream as strong as yours.”

“I thought it was too good to eat,” he snaps.

“It is, but that also means it’s too good to leave to rot.”

Shun is piecing them a bit more together.

 

**01**

Yuuto comes stumbling in later that night, body morphing back into his human guise.

He’s breathing heavily, red dripping down his face and drawing rose petals on the floor of Serena’s shop.  She doesn’t say anything.  Instead she calmly gets up to grab the first aid kit, returning and motioning for Yuuto to sit in front of her.

“I found him.” Yuuto wheezes.  “The one who took Yuuya.”

“And you tried to confront him?” Serena asks.  “Foolish.”

“He has Yuuya,” Yuuto tells her.

And maybe that’s what hurts Shun the most.  Yuuto knows how much Yuuya means to him, and Yuuto himself has warmed up significantly to the human.

“He’s not like them, though,” Yuuto admits.  “The ones we usually face.”

“Of course not,” Serena finishes cleaning up the wounds on Yuuto’s forehead.  “He is nothing like you.  He comes from something quite different.”

“Like you?” Shun’s question comes out harsher than he intended it to be.

A pause.

“As I’ve told you--he and I are different circumstances.”

 

**02**

“Different circumstances,” Shun grits out after a third unsuccessful night of looking for Yuuya.

Serena’s face remains passive.

“You’re a liar.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“And you’re hiding something.”

“...you’re more perceptive than your personality shows.”

She doesn’t say anything.

 

**03**

Shun’s being followed by small dreams again.  In his heightened agitation they flock to him even more, now.  Small dandelion spores that rest on his shoulders, trilling and chirping and rubbing their soft bodies against his cheeks.  They're wanting attention, maybe, but as irritated as he is, Shun can’t give it.

Yuuya is gone.

Yuuto has come back injured almost every night.

Serena doesn’t tell him anything.

And Shun remembers that man garbed in the deep ocean, with furling fins and sparkling eyes.  He remembers, vividly, how he came and swallowed everything whole.

The corpse of the monster Shun had slain that day gone.

And Yuuya--

Yuuya--

 _Gone_.

Shun finds himself shaking--disappointment in himself rising, guilt for letting Yuuya go, sadness--

Loneliness--

“Shun,” Yuuto is suddenly beside him, tail curling around Shun’s waist, tickling at his arm, “we haven’t gone hunting in a while.”

Too caught up in looking for Yuuya.  The small dream creatures around Shun disperse with Yuuto’s presence, their light fading off in the distance as they flit around the long limbs of some of the larger creatures.

“You think they’ve grown in number?”

“They have.”

 

**04**

The creature falls to the ground, body shimmering and unraveling bit by bit by bit.

Shun’s massive body shakes, muscles bunching, relaxing, and he turns his gaze to look at Yuuto.  Sharp eyes, blotted grey, a dimming light, stare back at him.  It had been harder to bing this one down, stronger--stronger.

Or perhaps in their panic they had grown lax.

“We should continue--”

“We wait.”

Because Shun remembers how the man from before came.

A creature like this one, a reality, a truth, dead on the ground.  He’d come, he’d come.

“You were waiting for me?” and like clockwork, like the birth of a star (bright and blinding and colliding, colliding), the man appears.

Furling fins, vivid red, billowing, flowing, as if the man inhabited the ocean and not the land.

“Yuuya,” Shun demands.  “Where is he?”


	5. Futility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His wings weighted, he seeks answers.

“You can’t hide these things forever,” Shun’s hands slam on to the arms of Serena’s chair and he leans in dangerously close.  His face is scrunched up into a snarl, a typical look he’s been wearing recently, but Serena doesn’t even same fazed.  Calm, calm forest stares back into the burning sun, and like the trees that spread their branches to the sky Serena takes _something_ from his anger.  

“But I have never hidden anything.”

“That man--what is he?  Like you--”

“I told you he and I are of different circumstances.  You sound like a broken record, Shun.”

A broken record that will keep going unless she does something about Yuuya.  Yuuto’s still coming back injured, and Shun is almost to that point as well.

“Then answers--give them to me.”

“I’m going to look--”

“Reiji.”

There’s a stillness brought about with that man’s name.  A bone chilling cold that seeps into his bones.

“His name is Reiji.”

 

**01**

“Yuuya,” Shun demands, “where is he?”

Reiji--because that is this man’s name--doesn’t say anything.  He looks contemplative, thoughtful.  Mouth pursed into a thin line, trailing fins floating there--it’s irksome.  Absolutely irksome, and Shun’s patience is shaved thinner and thinner every second.  This man took Yuuya, is hiding Yuuya.  

“You don’t need to know.”

“What--”

Shun’s anger doesn’t even cause a ripple.  Reiji’s face is still water, calm and holding too many secrets underneath.  

 _Irritating_.

“You knowing will not give the answers I need.”

 _Frustrating_.

“And taking him will!?”

“He is the main source of my questions, and he will also be what provides me answers.  Serena--unfortunately--only shares the cryptic ways in which we speak.”

“Give him back--”

“Only when I am given what I desire.”

Shun lunges.

His body bursts from flesh into feathers and raw muscle, talons scraping the ground before he rises up to strike with powerful flaps of his wings.

_He just didn’t expect the ocean to engulf him._

 

**02**

“I’m glad to have met you.”

“Hm?”

“And Yuuto.”

The sun is dipping below the horizon.  A single drop of amber on a backdrop of painted hues, the city and the creatures ambling about covered in splashes of orange.  Yuuya is sitting with Shun on the rooftop of the building Serena has set up shop, his arms holding the slumbering form of another dream.

“I’m just,” when Shun glances, he sees a small smile on Yuuya’s face.  Different from the broad ones he always gives when working in the shop or with friends.  Tiny, reserved, one that shows warmth and affection, that makes Shun’s own heart pound.

“You’re just?”

The dream in Yuuya’s arms squeaks as he hugs it tighter.

“Like this I--you show me so much, give me so much,” there’s the unspoken words.  The love, the affection--

“Yuuya, listen--”

 

**03**

“A fool,” Serena’s reprimand is harsh as she patches him up.  She ties the bandages on a bit tighter, dabs at his wounds harder, but Shun doesn’t register the pain in the slightest.

He’s still out of it, having woken up with his body slung over Yuuto’s shoulder and the cat in a similar state of injury--though certainly not as bad as Shun.  At the same time, Shun can still remember everything that had happened.  Reiji’s refusal, the way Shun himself had attacked, and the ocean.

Dark, encompassing--his wings were weighted down, hard to move, and he had been suffocating.

 _Suffocating_.

“To put your life down again,” Serena’s done with him, hands stained in the red of his blood.  “Foolish--I told you that he and I are of different circumstances.”

“It answers nothing,” he manages to rasp out.  “ _Nothing_.”

Serena’s hands still.

Yuuto looks up from where he sits, tired eyes holding just as many questions if not more.

“He…,” and for once Serena sounds hesitant.  For once, she shows how out of control this situation is.  “Reiji...is where dreams go to die.”

 _Die_.

“He is truth, he is finality, he is the reality that humans run away from.”

“....so he is the end, then.”

“No.”

Serena swallows.

“He is the Judge.”

 

**04**

A cold name for a cold man, but it makes more sense now that Shun knows.

“We’ll get Yuuya back,” Yuuto tells him.

Small comforts.

“We will.”

Shun will just have to brave the ocean again.

 


	6. Judge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fire that burns deep in the ocean, the heat that brings life in the midst of death.

Reiji, as Yuuya comes to know, is not one for conversation.

He will listen to Yuuya’s babble, continue to write and write and write, but he doesn’t say anything past that.  Even when he answers Yuuya’s questions, it is in the same crypticness which Yuuya has come to associate with Serena.  He’s starting to wonder if it is part of their kind to do so.

 _But Reiji had said he and Serena are of different circumstances_.

“But in the end you’re the same, right?” he ends up saying out loud one day.

Reiji looks up from what he’s writing, briefly startled.

“The same?”

“You and Serena.  You both handle dreams, so...in the end you’re the same.”

“I told you, Sakaki Yuuya,” he writes something down again.  “We are of different circumstances.”

Yuuya really wonders if that is so.

 

**01**

One day, Yuuya wakes up to Reiji’s hand on his face.

It’s cold--too cold--but he thinks of it like the times before.  When he wakes up surrounded by orbs of warm light and Reiji reaches out--this is different, however.  Different than usual, and Yuuya isn’t sure what to say.

He feigns sleep.

“Odd,” he hears Reiji mumble.  “A source of questions, but a source of answers….perhaps--”

Reiji’s thumb slides along his cheek.

“Perhaps he is the key.”

And the cold goes away.

 

**02**

Reiji comes back wiping black from his cheek.  It smears like blood, drifts away from him in wisps similar to that of the beasts that Shun and Yuuto slay.

“Your guard is a vicious one,” Reiji tells him.  “He looks for you desperately.”

“Then take me back.”

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

Reiji looks at him, then.  Full on looks at him, at _Yuuya_ , for once without that clinical gaze.  A harsh fire buried underneath the tons of water that he had encompassed in his being--the warmth of the deep sea, the life that surrounds it.

“I need answers,” Reiji says.  “And you are the one to give them.”

“I...I don’t even know your question.”

“How do you make your dreams?  Why are they so strong?”

And in his fervor, Reiji gets heated.  His tone rises, voice firmer than Yuuya’s heard it.

“Why do these beings flock to you?  How is it they are able to give life?  Why did I--”

He pauses.

A sharp cut, silence, and then Reiji picks up his book.

He opens it, pen scrawling across the page quickly, angrily, and Yuuya is confused.

“I will return,” and for the briefest moments Yuuya sees that facade flicker.  The first ripple on the surface, caused by a stone carelessly tossed.  Those furling fins change into something else, Reiji’s human skin cracking like fine porcelain and showing underneath something else.

A gaping maw, sharp teeth, scaled skin and gnarled claws--the ocean at its worst.

The ocean defending, the leviathan housed within.

 

**03**

“I apologize for the other day,” and Reiji is back to his normal habits.

Observing, barely touching, and somehow Yuuya misses the emotion that Reiji had shown.

“It’s okay.”

It’s not.

There’s an awkward air that fills the room, the mood set by the dim lights of dying dreams doing nothing to lessen it--no, they just make it heavier.

“I,” Yuuya starts, “I can try to answer your questions...I guess.”

There’s a pause in the scratching of pen to paper.

“....go on.”

“I...dreams are a human thing, right?  So perhaps I just dream more than others.”

Reiji arches one brow, “An interesting answer, but if that were the case there would be other humans I can choose.”

Yuuya at least tried.

 

**04**

“I do want to know.”

Yuuya tells Reiji this when the other returns with more dying dreams.  They flit out of Reiji’s cage, coalescing and merging before they rest in their perfect spheres.  The warmth is comforting, but it is nothing like the comfort of home.

“About?”  and Reiji is back at his desk, writing and counting, long fingers flicking the beads on the abacus.

“What you are...I mean, you said you collect them...right?  Truths and finalities.”

The harshness of reality that Shun and Yuuto slay.

“I do.”

“But there’s more, right?”

Because Yuuya has always seen Reiji as sort of a truth seeker, someone dead set in his pursuit of knowledge.

Reiji turns to look at him.

“That is correct, and I am nothing more.”

“You are--”

Yuuya swallows.  This is risky, bargaining with an entity like Reiji, but he thinks he’s had enough practice considering the myriad of conversations he has held with Serena.

“Tell me what you are,” he starts, “and I can give you a better answer of what I am.”

Reiji’s eyes narrow, catching Yuuya’s bluff.  It’s painfully obvious, but Yuuya can only hope.  Still, it seems Reiji takes pity on him.

“I am the Judge.”

“Judge?”

“I take the truths and the realities that have died, and I see what they are worthy of.  Can they return?  Will they want to return?  Or do they stay and fade away--lights left to be snuffed out.”

Yuuya finds himself shaking.

Reiji is the ocean, life giving and kind, but at the same time--

“I take dreams that have been lost, dreams that have been forsaken, and dreams that have mutated beyond what they are intended to be.  I collect, I count, I see what they are to be--have become.”

He is death.

“I am where dreams come to die.”


End file.
